the minivan voorsts.: what's up weekly. (work week and beyond!)

Sorry I didn't pop in here last week. It was so busy around here! We took the week off of school to get some work done around the yard - we usually have a break scheduled sometime in April, which is perfect for yard work, so I really try to maximize it when it comes.

A few of the projects we tackled:

First of all, we enjoyed the weather and rested up on the increasingly cute deck. Work from rest, my friends.

We cleaned out the garden beds.

Atticus started shoring up the chicken run so we can hopefully get a few chickens this spring.

The younger boys emptied the compost bin and hauled the compost to the garden beds.

The babies played. I mean, worked hard pushing their trucks around.

Lalie has enough hair for a ponytail! I die!

Atticus and Finneas trimmed up the trees. They even got on the roof and tackled some overhanging branches that have been giving precarious. Now that I know the boys can get up there easily enough, I'll have them get back up there soon to clean out the gutters.

We cut the branches up small enough to burn.

Does this job require three people? No it usually does not. But Rocco wanted to the pull the trigger, and I wanted to make sure we didn't hit the concrete with the saw, so here we are, three people working together at the job. As Todd said, "Just like it shows in the manual."

We went to the yard waste place and picked up a bunch of wood chips to mulch the chicken yard.

Remember when the whole chicken yard was rock and dirt? And how I moved all the rock out and put some around the utility boxes on the other side of our yard? Well, one of the boys' jobs last week was to remove it all again. It ended up being super annoying to have to cross the rock bed to get around the yard, so I'm seeding it for grass instead.

We dethatched and weeded the front yard to prep for grass seed, then I put down top soil, grass seed, fertilizer and peat moss. Every year I make an effort, and yet every year the yard keeps looking worse somehow. Hopefully this is the year the work pays off.

Todd had a couple days off at the end of the week, so he hung my new exterior lights and house numbers.

Rocco seemed pretty excited.

Then we took a break for a popcorn party on the deck. Remember? Work from rest.

Then we were back at the chicken coop project. This was kind of a major undertaking. Atticus and I made like a thousand runs back and forth to Home Depot, but he got it done. Now I just need to find the chicken coop paint to get the lid looking finished.

I mulched the front flower beds.

And Todd built us a fire pit in the back yard! Almost every Sunday, he and the kids make a fire out there, and our metal fire pit was in complete shambles. This one should last a good long time! (Ignore the condition of the grass. As bad as our front yard is, our backyard is a thousand times worse because the soil is filled with rocks and old netting, and it's super high traffic from the kids playing back there. I'm not really sure how to fix it.)

In addition to all that, we've also had a few other adventures. First, we've been working with Oey to get her potty trained overnight. She has not figured out how to stay dry at night yet, so we really hit it hard this past week and have had some successes.

I haven't driven out of town myself in yeeeeeeears, and I've decided that I'm too old for that. I need to relearn how to be comfortable driving. So I've driven out to pick up our milk both weeks (obviously, with Todd in the car with me so that if I panic, I don't get stuck somewhere with no way to get home).

Our milk lady has the world's tiniest calf. She was born weighing just 25 pounds! I think she's like five weeks old in this picture and not much bigger than the baby goats.

Penelope's best friend turned eighteen recently, so we went to her birthday party. There was folk dancing! It was so fun.

And speaking of birthdays, Penelope turned sixteen! She is so smart and funny. She's insightful and creative. She loves writing stories, drawing, reading, and writing music. She is so good with kids. She is excellent at school. She is a good friend, and I'm glad she's mine.

Knox was really into pretending to take everyone's picture, and then he would turn the "camera" around so they could see how the photo turned out.

Todd's and my gift to her was an antique typewriter.

It took some more finagling after this to get it to type clearly, but we put in new ribbon and Penelope has spent time figuring out all its functions and quirks, so it types much more clearly than this now.

We went to Sonic after dinner to celebrate her birthday with some friends.

We all sang Happy Birthday to her

She has decided that her first story typed up on this typewriter will be a detective mystery. Seems fitting.

In other adventure news, Penelope was scheduled to take another CLEP test on Monday, but we got there, waited for the office staff to get back from lunch, and then found out that the proctor was out sick. No one thought we might like to have received a phone call, and no one else was apparently qualified to sit and watch her take the test, so we had to reschedule. It really wouldn't be a huge deal, except the test center is on the Army Post, you have to go and get a background check every single time you want to get on post, so it's like a whole thing. I really don't need to be griping about it; I just thought I'd include you in the mild annoyance I felt. You're welcome. We'll go back again this Monday, and if she passes, we'll celebrate by getting cheese curds from Culver's, so please be praying she passes, if only for my sake. (I've been working out more consistently lately, and trying to eat in a calorie deficit, so a lot of my thoughts have been aimed at those cheese curds. I need them for my mental health.)

We've also spent a lot of time outside this week not working, in case you are starting to think that all our "free" time is really just spent doing more work and taking more tests.

Blowing bubbles for them.

Putting a bandaid on Knox's knee. She's so maternal.

And the last item of news is that the neighbors were holding an estate sale, so I went over and found a bunch of fun things: a pressure canner and some jars, a really beautiful wicker laundry basket, an oil lamp, a quilt. I also got the world's most comfortable rocking chair, and a funny little handmade potato bin.

It says, "Spuds" on top, and "Betty" on bottom. I have so many questions. Normally you keep spuds in the top one, and onions in the bottom one. But this one is for keeping potatoes and Betty? Or is the top one for Spuds to keep his things in, and the bottom is for Betty to keep hers? Or does the whole bin belong to Betty, but only the top is designated for spud storage? But then what does she keep in the drawer underneath?

And those were many of our items of note. The rest of this week was spent with our noses in the books, trying to finish up the school year. I think we might be done with most of our work by the end of next week! If we really push, I think we can get it done! And then it will be SUMMMMMMAH!